NEWS


long hours? And if so, who, where, and why? Most forces cannot answer.


THE DATA THAT DOES EXIST IS ALARMING


The tiny minority of forces that could produce figures revealed shocking levels of overwork.


• Suffolk officers breached it 1,188 times.


times in one year.


• Greater Manchester Police logged 67,378 “Working


Time exemptions” and yet could not determine how many of these were breaches of minimum rest or excessive weekly hours without manually checking every record.


When the only four forces with accessible data show massive numbers of legal breaches, the obvious question is: What is happening in the 60 per cent of forces with no data at all? And why don’t chiefs want to know?


“DO LEADERS NOT KNOW, OR DO THEY NOT WANT TO KNOW?” PFEW National Secretary John Partington said the findings reveal a “shocking lack of responsibility” at the most senior levels of policing. “Working time is a frontline safety issue and a major public interest concern. If


officers are routinely exhausted because excessive hours and cancelled rest days have become normal, their decision making in life-or-death situations will be affected.”


• Morale is at rock bottom. • Pay has fallen by more than 20 per cent in real terms since 2010.


• Norfolk officers breached the 48-hour limit 1,070


“The Federation says the growing sense among frontline officers is that chiefs are detached, indifferent and increasingly cavalier about their legal responsibilities.”


He condemned the failure of so many forces to monitor the issue: “If officer welfare means more than


lip service, this information should be at senior leaders’ fingertips. No responsible employer should need two days to work out whether its workforce is being overworked. “Do leaders not know, or do they not


want to know? “In any other safety-critical profession,


an employer that cannot evidence how long its workforce is working would be found in breach of its duties. Policing is no different.”


OVERWORK + LOW PAY = ATTRITION SURGE The Federation says the working-time failures cannot be separated from the wider crisis engulfing policing:


• Trauma, fatigue and burnout are becoming


days cancelled at industrial scale.


endemic.


And yet chief constables, many of whom continue to support pay settlements far below inflation, still


cannot show they are monitoring the basic safety conditions of the people they command. The Federation says the growing sense


among frontline officers is that chiefs are detached, indifferent and increasingly cavalier about their legal responsibilities.


LEGALLY-BACKED IMPROVEMENT NOTICES INCOMING In response to what it calls “system- wide failure”, PFEW is now moving to issue Health and Safety Notices of Improvement to forces. These notices:


• Are formal legal enforcement tools under health and safety law.


• Attrition is rising at the fastest rate in modern policing.


• Require immediate corrective action • Cannot be satisfied with “promises” or “intentions”.


• Carry the risk of further enforcement or legal consequences if ignored.


09| POLICE | APRIL | 2026


• Officers are routinely working 12 to 16-hour days, with rest


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